Smoke in the Air, Poison in the Blood
Asher
I don’t like being forced to play the long game, but tonight I allow it. Patience has its perks when the pieces are finally on the board—and Violet has no idea she’s one of them. She walks into this penthouse blind to the fact that every body here is curated, primed, and dosed under my eye. No one breathes without me noticing. No one touches without it meaning something.
She doesn’t know I’m watching the entire night bend around her like gravity. She doesn’t know she’s the reason I’m here at all.
And she sure as fuck doesn’t know how distracting she is.
I move through the room with a bourbon warming my hand, letting the chaos swell around me.Zhums beneath the crowd like a live wire—skin electric, nerves firing, and inhibitions stripped down to bone.
A girl at the bar throws her head back, laughter dissolving into a sobbed moan as the man behind her grinds into her like he’s starving. Her fingers claw for the marble edge; his hands grip her hips hard enough to bruise, and the music swallows the sound of both of them coming apart.
To my left, a man lie on a velvet chaise, shirt open, and breath uneven. A woman kneels between his legs, dragging her mouth up his chest slow and filthy. He’s shaking, trying to hold still, but she’s eating every sound he tries not to make.
And then, through the haze of bodies and sound, I see her.
Violet stands at the edge of the room like she’s been carved out of stillness itself. One hand on her hip, and the other curls around a glass she hasn’t bothered to drink. Her hair is pulled back into a loose bun, with soft strands slipping free to brush her neck. Her dress clings to her hips, to the curve of her ass, and it should be a crime to look that good without even trying.
She’s unmasked tonight. Exposed. Soft and sharp at once. More dangerous like this than she ever was in the skintight dress at the last party.
But it isn’t just her body. It’s the way she watches.
Her eyes—dark, warm, and too perceptive—follow every movement in the room. The couple tangled on the velvet chaise. The pair against the mirrored wall, his hands gripping her thighs as he lifts her like she weighs nothing. Violet’s chest rises in shallow breaths. Her cheeks flush. Her fingers tighten around her glass.
She doesn’t have to be touched to feel it. It’s written all over her face.
Violet takes all of it in with a scientist’s eye and a woman’s hunger she doesn’t want to acknowledge. She absorbs it and resists it at the same time—like she’s immune to drowning but not immune to heat. It makes my pulse tighten, something low and territorial curling in my chest.
I should walk away and pretend she’s not unraveling something inside me. But I don’t. I can’t. The way she stands—separate but caught up—is too tempting, too irritating, and too impossible to ignore.
Up on the mezzanine, Luca shifts his weight and scratches his shoulder twice.
Our code for:Someone doesn’t belong.
My eyes follow his line from where I stand on the main floor, landing on a man tucked near the back corner. Wrong energy. Wrong stillness. Wrong kind of watching. Not one of mine.
And he’s drifting too close to Violet.
I narrow my eyes as he pushes his hair back. His cuff slides up an inch. Enough for me to see the ink curled around his wrist.
A dagger through a rose.
Rinaldi.
My pulse flattens into something cold and efficient.
This isn't a coincidence, it’s a provocation.
I tap the cufflink on my left wrist once.
Maverick appears in less than a minute, slicing out of the crowd like a blade freed from its sheath. He leans against the pillar beside the intruder, as casual as a wolf picking its teeth. A murmur. A nod. Then his hand is at the man’s neck, dragging him off toward the shadows behind the bar.
Before I can move, Cami materializes beside Violet, bright, chaotic, and entirely inconvenient. She thrusts another cocktail into Violet’s hand.
“You’re standing here looking all broody and tragic,” she teases. “Drink. This is not a museum.”
Violet takes a hesitant sip, lips tightening at the burn. Cami giggles and loops an arm through hers, tugging her into the crowd.
